author's notes ch. 1
author's notes
Chapter: 1 ((god))
Type: Original
Posted on- 2/22/04 (ff.net short cut)
Blip! iChat popped up on my already crowded screen. What did they need this time around? I really didn’t feel like being bothered. I scratched my head and mussed around what little hair I had, then clicked on the message, ready to hit the “X” to close it off the screen.
“Would you like to receive a message from ManOLaMancha?”
I toyed with the mouse for a second, then, reluctantly, hit the OK.
ManOLaMancha- Ries! Ries!
RiceCooker87- Waht? is the Something Wrong?
ManOLaMancha- ‘The’? ‘Waht’? And what year of college are you in again? Ressa, you have to be serious!
RiceCooker87-
There! Threr! Sheise! I can’t tyoe that fast i get my words messed up! just dropp it
ManOLaMancha- Fine then. By the way, I wanted to say, “Sorry”.
RiceCooker87- It isn’t your fault, u do know tht
ManOLaMancha- Nonetheless…
RiceCooker87- What is this a writers forum? its im, lighten up on the punctuation n spelling
ManOLaMancha- …
ManOLaMancha- No wonder why your online stories have so many typos. A complete disregard for the English language!
RiceCooker87- u read them?????
ManOLaMancha- Check your reviews, if you don’t believe me. And, by the way, if you want me to go with you tomorrow, I would be more than happy to share the grievances. I can’t get there myself, anyway. I still can’t open the gate to he cemetery myself.
RiceCooker87- hahaha! u made a typo! :-) its the not he
ManOLaMancha- Pitiful.
RiceCooker87- suke told me not to invite anyone, sry. ill bring yu there sunday, k?
ManOLaMancha- ‘fyne, k’????’ There, are you happier now that I have thrown four years of English and linguistics study out the window? Heh. Unfortunately, however, I have to go. I’ll call you sometime this evening.
“ManOLaMancha has signed off.”
And with that, I switched to what I was reading on the Internet.
Between Yu´ and Me
---Falling Sakura Petals’s First Amazing Work---
This is a weird story. Just get past the first chapter, it DOES get better. Please review, too, I love feedback, even if you send me flames. There is a glossary at the end explaining all the Japanese terms used, as one of the main characters, Yu´ (pronounced like ‘you’), is a Japanese shaman/ sorcerer.
Enjoy!
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“Enjoy?” I spun around. “Enjoy what? We have an entire fiction story to write for the Art of Literature and you’re saying ‘enjoy’?!? What are you smoking?” It was Lilly, my roommate, nosing into my business again, and if I hadn’t known she was in the room I certainly wouldn’t have read aloud.
I sighed. Thank God I had my own Mac. I was just rereading the first six chapters of “Between Yu´ and Me”, a story I- as you can see- had posted on FictionPress.com. It was a dinky thing I’d started submitting at the end of February- although the early draft had been rotting on my computer since freshman year here at UConn. Nobody knew about it- at least I thought- as I’d never wanted to associate myself with my Press name of Falling Sakura Petals. I’m not Japanese, although I have visited the country, and quite frankly, I also didn’t want snide remarks from my classmates. If I had a friend here that that went on the site, sure, I’d tell them I wrote, too- but I didn’t have any Net buddies on campus. And I really didn’t want anyone to find out my hobby, either.
Especially not Lilly Peterson. She was a great person, yes. I met her sophomore year in Basket Weaving (oh, please, just don’t ask) and we dormed together the past two years. She just hates Anime (or anything remotely related) with a burning passion. I think it’s because she watched the last episode of FLCL with her boyfriend the night before they broke up. She thought all anime was as confusing as that, and to this day won’t have a word of it. Considering the story I’d written, I was afraid of what she might say if she read it. And then the inevitable. She came over to my computer.
“What the crap is this?” she pointed to my computer, reading off the URL on the screen.
I was prepared for the worst. “Lil, it’s a website where people post original fiction. There are some stories on here that are better than stuff you see in bookstores. I’m just rereading this,” I said, pointing to the screen at my work.
“Ressa, are you cheating on your original fiction assignment?”
I gulped. “Lil, this is my assignment. But I’m not cheating on it.”
“How?”
“It’s my own work. I’m just looking it over. I started posting it two and a half months ago, but it’s been in the works for a long time. I always thought this was a story that needed to be told.” I hid Internet Explorer and brought Apple Works onto the screen. Scores of chapter titles showed up on the recently added tab of the menu screen, and I pointed down the list.
“You really wrote all this? But… but… I thought you wanted to be an animator, not an author!”
“This was something I just had to write, Lil. You can read it if you want.” I got up out of my seat, covered in Husky stickers and let her sit down.
“Okay, I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” she said, “and it may give me some ideas to work on. But I’m warning you, I’m a very harsh critic…”
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I loved saying prayers when I was a little girl. Every night, I’d sit up in bed, covers swathed around me, and I’d say in my head the unorthodox- not the “Now I lay me down to sleep…” bit at all. No, I was probably the youngest person alive to really question religion. At four, I’d already shod away the belief of any deity in my own mind (at three I’d disproved the Tooth Fairy by playing a dirty trick on my parents to prove it to my older brother, en context) and at this point, it was no Dios I spoke to nightly.
“Yu´, take me flying. You said you did it when you were my age. I’ve seen it in your memories and dreams. You had wings!” This was my prayer, ever since I could comprehend what was truly going on in my own mind. For while religion was out of the question, surrealism was not- especially when I really got a response.
For with a laugh, as this had become a nightly endeavor, I’d get a reply. His voice was youthful, but sagely… not fully lowered, like an adult’s, but with an air of adolescence. He was Yu´ to me, and at the time I wasn’t quite sure just what he was, other than a name. It was just that, no matter when it was, I’d hear his laugh and I was happy... laughing was just the way he spoke. His voice itself had absolutely no emotion- none. It was monotomatic, and it seemed like that was the only way he knew to speak; his laugh is how I’d figure out how he really felt. His ‘prayer laugh’ was never exactly the same, but his words were; they’d become a nightly tradition for us.
“Iie, Yen-chan. No, no. Not today. Tomorrow.” Usually his titter was joyful and slightly condescending out of my naivety, but never in a bad way. Sometimes, though, it would seem like his laugh was sighing or even crying- like it forced itself to expel. And twice in my memory, he didn’t laugh at all. Still, even if his laugh lacked any form of passion, it was his sign to me that he existed, and I’d be happy to know he was there... when it was absent, well, the words were dead. It was a crushing feeling.
“Yu´, take me flying. You said you did it when you were my age. I’ve seen it in your memories and dreams. You had wings!”
“Iie, Yen-chan. No, no. Not today. Tomorrow.”
Ironically, the first day that he didn’t laugh was six- almost seven years ago, when I was sixteen… and it was the day before he did take me flying.
Because he could again.
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She stopped, turned the chair to me, and looked me in the eye.
“I have to say this to you, Ressa, I hate anything remotely associated with Japan. And if this wasn’t as intriguing as it is… I would have stopped.” she proclaimed, as she turned her chair back around to the computer and clicked the down arrow.
It wasn’t so much as it was well written, but rather… well, it doesn’t matter as long as people like it, right? As long as I never showed the story to Yusuke… He would be mad, I’m sure of it. It wasn’t my place to really do what I did, publishing without consent of all. But wasn’t it also my story to tell?…
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It was tenth grade- yes, that’s when I was sixteen- sometime in the midst of winter. At this point, I’d more than realized who and what I was. I was, in essence, a schizophrenic- no, maybe the butt end of a dissociative identity disorder. Yet, Yu´ wasn’t like any personality problem I’d seen.
He was his own entire entity stuck inside of my (now- to his embarrassment- developing) body. He had memories of his own of a past life in Japan, some two hundred years of thoughts starting at the beginning of the last millennium to somewhere around the 1200’s- we’d looked up what had happened during his lifetime on the internet to make the estimate- and then, all memory stopped. It wasn’t like he’d just died in his sleep, he had been some kind of sorcerer with amazing powers. His oldest image of him looking into the pond by his house- he was over two hundred at that point- he looked no older than a teenager. Far stranger was that his final memory was in the middle of the day, and that it just... surceased. There was no more. We were schizophrenics- two separate people living inside one body.
It was too crazy. I never told anyone about him; what would I say? But those memories! He taught magic, according to them, and looking at the faces of the students; they were just too fleshed out as people. Which was why I’d always ask him to take me flying, to the point of it becoming ritual. I was circuitously asking him to teach me, too, and to prove himself. He always said iie. No, he would not. So the godless doubter in me kept me from accepting his existence without proof. The only thing he could show me was one of his later memories.
See, according to Yu´, his father, a far more powerful conjurer, had one student who was, to speak politically correct, a little idiotic. And that’s putting it nicely. He accidentally spilled ink on one of Yu´’s father’s important books, altering the incantation within, releasing a monster. Yu´ and his brother Kohaku watched in horror as their father sacrificed himself to perform a spell to split the monster into several hundred pieces, sealing it into the ink shrouded book. Kohaku, as the elder of the two brothers and seeing that the book wasn’t shutting itself completely, told his brother that he would seal himself to the cover as a guardian. With that, he turned into a tanuki, a raccoon dog, and sealed himself onto the cover. Yu´ held the book in his hands, staring down, and started to cry. He took his own magic, all of it, and sealed it into the demon’s book. In five minutes, his father had sacrificed himself, his brother had sealed himself alive onto the book to keep it closed, and the idiotic student had picked up a sword and committed suicide out of embarrassment. Out of misery, Yu´, now a normal, un-magical being, lifted the book and held it close to his heart, walking out of the bloodstained library.
Talk about a soap opera. About as likely as me getting arrested by the cops (which would have been never except for the fact that I was arrested at the end of December that year for disruption of the peace- serious disruption- and fighting in public).
Anyway, it was less than a week before Yu´ had his last memory. And then, eight hundred years later, he woke in me. He told me, around when I was ten, that he’d sealed his magic for three reasons- to forget his past, to help his brother keep the book sealed, should he run out of his own power, and, though he never wanted the third reason to happen, it was a safety. Should the book be opened and he was alive, his magic would return to him. He’d know if it was unsealed immediately, and he vowed that, should something happen, he’d sacrifice himself, too.
I thought it was just an excuse to be insane. He couldn’t really prove he was a sorcerer! His magic was locked away... hah, yeah right. I just was a girl with a delusion of grandeaur complex, trying too hard to have something extraordinary in me. For a long time, I really believed I was crazy. I thought that Yu´ was in my head out of a desire not to be lonely. It was an impossible situation; this was the only idea I could come up with. So what he was able to answer history questions that I could not? So what if I was learning how to speak and write Japanese? It couldn’t be a separate person, living quietly in the back of my mind. The history questions were just lucky guesses, after all.
Then, in the winter when I was sixteen, my great aunt Laurie died. It wasn’t related to Yu´ at all, really, but that’s how I could remember the day. I never met Laurie, just her daughter (my aunt Lisa), so I really didn’t know what to feel. It was just another Shivah I had to go to, the Jewish version of a wake. It was there that made my world turn upside down, not because of all the faces- we’d already expected her to go anyway, even those who were close to her. There was no crying, that wasn’t the problem at all.
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“Wait a second, here. Six years ago, in the previous winter? That’s December, of 1997. Your great aunt really did die then. And then your mother said she heard a thud when you went to use the bathroom, and afterwards, you spoke like you were really preoccupied and nervous, like you had too much caffeine or something. Was that the problem?” Lilly and my mom were both born writers. They often had long conversations on the phone, discussing plot points with each other.
“This is just a story. It’s for entertainment,” I replied. “It’s too far fetched to be real.”
“No, you’re right. Why would I even ask? Let me continue.”
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Yu´’s single most and worst fears were answered that day. I was in my aunt Lisa’s bathroom when it happened- a glowing sphere of pale blue shot through the bathroom celling, and I was knocked backwards into the tiled wall; then my mind went blank. When I awoke, it was dark and my family was in the car; we were driving home. I couldn’t move! I was sitting upright, and as my head cleared, I realized my left hand was nervously tapping on the door handle. Nonetheless, my body was moving of its own accord.
‘You’re awake; that’s good.’ Yu´ said in my head. I noticed he wasn’t laughing at all. His voice was always devoid of feeling, but now it seemed corpselike without his trademark.
‘Yu´? What’s going on? I can’t move, but…’
‘I’m doing this, Yen-chan. I have my magic back again. That's the light that… we saw.’
‘W… we? You’ve never said we when commenting on something I saw!’
‘I never wanted to press anything on you. I’m already a burden to you as it is. You are going insane, trying to disprove my existence.’ My left hand stopped tapping the door handle, and started tapping my thigh. Yu´ was always extremely modest, always blaming himself for things, even if he wasn’t even connected with them. ‘When you fainted, I took over... I didn’t want your family to worry. I know I’ve done wrong, but I can’t relinquish control until you get home. Your parents will see the aura, and I know you’re not the type to explain, nor will I do it for you- it isn’t my place. Please forgive me.’
For the rest of the ride, I felt awkward. I couldn’t do anything. If my glasses slipped down my face, I couldn’t fix them; I had to wait until Yu´ noticed, and he seemed too deep in thought to care. I wasn’t angry at all; in fact, I was quite satisfied. Sixteen years of disbelief, and suddenly I had proof that I truly was not insane. It felt odd being a puppet, but it was only temporary. I now believed him. I was the person who should have been doing the apologizing, not him at all. There was only one horrible thought that really crossed my mind.
‘Yu´! All these years, you’ve seen me get undressed, seen me... NAKED!!! And you’re a guy! You’re a perv! Do you realize that!!!!!’
‘Hah, took you a while. You finally believe I exist.’ He had his glow back again, at least. I decided to annoy him further.
‘That’s your response to this? And how did you act in front of my family?? They probably have been scarred for life!’
‘I’m sure they have, considering I mimicked what you always do.’
‘Hey, what do you mean by that!’
‘Oh, nothing at all…’
Silence for another ten minutes.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘It’s odd- I’ve been in here for sixteen years, unable to move. It’s horrible. I have to sit back and watch you live your life, and you required more proof than I could ever offer. It’s taken you too long to finally believe me... until doomsday itself… You’ll be a great scientist, someday, do you know that? Such a disbeliever.’
‘Doomsday…?’
‘My magic has been unsealed. Someone opened that dammed book!’ For the first time ever, did I hear Yu´ get angry. It was scary, but he did refrain from showing it through body language. For someone so infuriated, that was quite a feat. ‘And how the hell am I supposed to reseal it? Amaterasu is laughing at me! I can’t sacrifice myself to kill the yasha, I’d kill you, too!’ He calmed down a little and sighed, but accidentally out loud.
‘Now you’ve done it, moron.’ I groaned. My mom was attuned into everything I did.
“Jenny, is there anything wrong? Does your head still hurt from slipping in the bathroom? That was a considerably stentorophonic, loud, crash we heard.” Go figure. My mom was a high school English teacher, always peppering her sentences with vocabulary she wanted me to learn. And it actually succored, helped, me!
“No, no, I’m fine, [yawn] just a little tired. I’ll just have a new war bruise for tomorrow.” Yu´ said. It was really weird hearing myself talk, but what was far weirder was that I would have said something much to the effect of what Yu´ was saying! He really did know me well- it was a little creepy, I’ll admit.
“Do you want some ice?” my mom asked, worried.
“It’s fine, there’s no swelling,” Yu´ yawned again. “How much longer until we get home? I’m about to punch in.”
“It’s another hour, honey. Sleep in the car.”
“Whatever,” he mumbled. Yu´ rubbed my forehead with my hand, made my eyelids droop, and in general, made a very convincing, tired me. He even put the little inflections in my voice that I really didn’t even notice I did until that moment. He’d fool a lot of people.
‘That was… really good. You have a lot of time on your hands.’ I said to him, startled.
‘Arigatou. I was a shape shifter in my own time- I had to act on my feet often. But you need rest, Yen-chan. When you wake tomorrow, you’ll have your body back. It’s already past ten, and you have school tomorrow.’
Before I dozed, I contemplated whether or not I should ask him. I finally decided that it was tradition, and I said it, ‘Yu´, take me flying. You said you did it when you were my age. I’ve seen it in your memories and dreams. You had wings!’
Silence. I seriously thought I’d done something to insult him. But, without laughter, he finally made his reply.
‘Iie, Yen-chan. No, no. Not today. Tomorrow. And, this time… I mean it. I beseech you, Yen-chan, Jennifer, I need your help. Maybe the two of us can find who has opened the book…’
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END ch 1
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“So, you really would hand this in? It’s excellent.”
“No, it’s not really that great...”
“You know, I see an awful lot of you in this girl Jen. It’s awesome how you write- like you actually were there.”
“Heh. Yeah. I’ve been writing fantasy for a long time.”
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